Previews

Stuntman: Ignition

Stuntman: Ignition will put you in the driver's seat as the real star of a four-wheeled action movie.

Spiffy:

The action movie setting is tied in nicely with the course layouts and designs; cheesy '80s mustaches.

Iffy:

Infuriatingly difficult for any but the most hardcore of driving enthusiasts; cheesy '80s mustaches.

If you had the chance to watch Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof" earlier this year as part of the "Grindhouse" double feature, you saw Kurt Russell as the villainous Stuntman Mike. This character's motivation, his very reason for existence, was to drive a powerful American muscle car in death-defying scenes, endangering his life while some pretty boy actor got top billing. You'd think that this would be an easy job to get away from, but he could never truly leave behind the thrill of driving fast or living through a dangerous crash.

Live Fast

Stuntman: Ignition doesn't have the disturbing sexual overtones of Tarantino's recent picture, but it does have a few other things in common. You'll see that both partake in the widespread love affair with the muscle car. But most importantly, the game allows you to participate in the extra long, incredibly dangerous takes that make the car chase scenes in these films so gripping.

Stuntman: Ignition is laid out in chapters that are split up as scenes in high-octane action movies. The first fictional movie, Overdrive, has two different scenes for you to film. You'll start off on a road and essentially have to hit a series of checkpoints correctly in order to pass with a decent score. Checkpoints come in several varieties, some more difficult to hit adequately than others. Even the checkpoints that seem simple can be difficult to nail, like those that require you turn the car sharply in a specific area.

Get Your Motor Running

You will have to drive beneath trucks, over ramps, through obstacles, and even collide intentionally with other moving vehicles. A bomb checkpoint, for instance, looks like a circle on the floor that glows green and slowly deepens to yellow and then into red. If your car doesn't hit that spot before it gets too red, you'll miss the shot and be penalized a scary red X for that particular part of the scene. Too many of these bad marks and you'll have to reshoot the scene from the very beginning. You have a visual indicator as well as voice direction to guide you, but actually performing these tasks can be quite hard.

If you think this sounds easy, then just take one of the initial tracks as an example. The course starts off by having you reverse your Italian sports car underneath a moving semi, then pulling off a quick 180 and building up speed. You'll race down a busy street, zooming underneath an exploding taxi cab and driving dangerously close to a moving trolley. Driving underneath another semi, you then have to drive through an explosion, and then activate your boosters to hit a ramp with enough speed to fly over an accident blocking the route ahead. Maneuvering several tight alleyways and dodging incoming vehicles and armed gunmen will send you towards the final leg of the scene, where after clipping an SUV, you'll take a series of ramps, launching you first onto a supermarket, and then through the air into a helicopter. How you could possibly survive this shoot is anyone's guess, but it indeed makes for one thrillride of a scene.

Visually, Stuntman: Ignition lies squarely in the territory inhabited by the more recent Burnout games, not quite matching the graphical fidelity of recent racers like Forza 2 or DiRT. Still, this is to be expected, as the action-packed environments are more reminiscent of what you'd see in an open-world game with driving elements, like Saints Row or Grand Theft Auto. While the game's courses don't allow for true exploration, there really is a lot to take in during your pulse-pounding screen takes, like fiery explosions, spraying gunfire, and plenty of broken glass.

While the concept behind Stuntman: Ignition translates well to video game form, the high-speed nature of the action, along with the exacting requirements of your director, can lead to many frustrating play sessions. While we've only been able to spend time with the preview build thus far, we've already been shaking our fists and cursing to ourselves about the steep difficulty curve. Still, challenge can be a good thing, and Stuntman: Ignition is shaping up to be a formidable adversary for even the most talented of video game car jockeys. Stay tuned for more as we approach its August release date.